An old friend is one who you have done life with. And one who reminds you who you are.

She is a remembrance to you of all the things you were, but had forgotten you were. She tells you back your own story and fills in the gaps where your own memory has been eroded. All from her unique perspective.

Yesterday we had a long overdue morning together at the spa that ended in a quiet lunch in a corner of a hotel restaurant.

And I told her a story. And I wondered aloud to her what would happen through my story. And she reminded me of something that had happened to me when we were 20.

When we lived together in college, I worked at the campus library. I shelved books, lent books out, checked books in. I was the queen of circulation for three years.

On day, a Christian professor who I didn’t know stopped me in the library. He looked straight into my eyes, and almost as if he was startled by his own response, told me in a very serious way that God was going to do amazing things through me.

I’d totally forgotten about that.

Evidently I’d come home and told my roommate about what had happened. And for some reason she remembered.

So yesterday, fifteen years later, she reminded me.

We don’t even remember which prof it was, but his forgotten but now unearthed words remind me of who I am.

It makes me believe that I CAN write this book.
That I CAN tell my own story.
That God WILL be amazing in me.

And the thing is, fifteen years ago, those words meant little. But now, they mean everything.

Thank you Lisa, for reminding me who I am.
Thank you anonymous professor, for seeing something of my future in me.
Thank you readers, for being the eyes and ears to my journey.

Misty took some amazing photos of me a few weeks ago.

It was really fun. We went to an abandoned house in an old part of town and set up shop. People drove by, stared, stopped. So, I felt a little embarrassed and altogether self-conscious. I’m not used to posing for a camera just by myself. I think the last time was for my senior pictures in 1992 or my wedding photography four years later. Let’s not revisit the hairstyles of the mid-nineties…for all of our sakes.

Go check out her blog, her photography website and the pictures of me. I promise — no 1996 hairstyles.

Today she wants to be a princess.

A real one. As a profession.

Yesterday she wanted to be a doctor. Or a dentist/doctor. If there is such a thing.

This morning she told me she wanted to be a mommy when she grows up.

And she practices being a teacher when she plays with her friends, grouping everyone into student groups and telling them how to spell her name.

And when she’s all done playing grown-up, after the coming-in-from-outside arguments, after the please-cut-the-crusts-off-Mama requests, and after the I-want-to-butter-my-own-toast pleas, she doesn’t want to be a princess anymore.

Or a dentist, or a doctor, or even a mommy or a teacher. Her independent streak (that I swear she gets from her father) is gone, lost in a puddle on the floor next to the spot of her last tantrum, and she just wants to be held.

She’s all done playing grown-up and she wants to be my baby again. Even if only for a few minutes.

A Spin instructor is supposed to foster comradery among his students.

If we are going to get up at 4:30 in the morning to make a 5 AM call time for a cycle class, there had better be some evidence of shared burden in the room. In some Spin classes, the cyclers holler and whoop when they feel their muscles burn.

[I personally, am not a "whooper" but I do give a thumbs up now and again.]

At the very least, some of us sing to the music that can vary from U2 to Michael Jackson, Fergie to Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Beyonce to The Beach Boys. Singing is encouraged. It helps to foster the mini community that is created every Wednesday morning for one hour when it is still dark outside.

We see the same bleary-eyed people, women with no makeup and a handful of men who smell like they had Italian for dinner last night.

My girlfriend, a relative Spin newbie, was attending her third indoor cycle class ever and was spinning along right next to me this morning. Skip, our Beach Boys-obsessed instructor, had the music in the class up so loud that I was sure my husband sleeping through his alarm back at home could hear it.

I leaned over to talk to her. Briefly. Non-obtrusively, about our weekends. We giggled at something, I was in the middle of telling her something about Bass Lake [all the while pistoning my feet like he requested], when Skip jumps off his bike and comes to scold me. For talking.

Yes, like I was in seventh grade science.

Now I’ve been in hundreds of cycle classes over the past nine years. I’ve taken classes with friends, with my husband, with people I didn’t know and under dozens of instructors. Not once have I been scolded for speaking to someone else.

Skip is old enough to be my father, but even so, I don’t think he thought of me as a daughter he needed to mold into a slient, respectful cycler.

What he did, beside creating a more quiet fitness class, he killed any community that was in the room. An instructor should inspire us to want to work harder but his scolding sucked any motivation out of me. And a Spin instructor should work to create a short-term fellowship of team members who together, cycle up the imaginary hill and together get to the top. Skip perceived my talking to a friend as disrespect. He failed to recognize it as community. He valued a rule-following, silent class more than he valued one who would work together to reach a common goal.

The other women near me heard Skip’s one-way conversation with me, were justly appalled at his treatment of me. The irony is that by scolding me, he ostracized the whole left side of the class, who incidentally, sided with me. He divided us.

I was embarrassed, I considered leaving the class, but I stayed. I just worked harder than I would have, maybe, if he’d left me alone. I wasn’t going to let him win.

Skip may have killed the community in the room, but he didn’t kill me.

You are brave.

You can run that extra mile.

Take a drink of water. Breathe in the cool air this morning. Relax your fists and uncurl the toes in your running shoes and go. Finish. Run to your goal. You are braver than you think and the extra mile won’t kill you.

You can raise your children in this world.

Speak the truth into their ears over dinner, before bed and while they sleep. Be the strength in their lives. Fill their hearts with good things, kind words, teach them and discipline them. Then… let go. You can do it. You are braver than you think.

You can tell your story boldly.

Take out the pencil. Open the laptop. And write. Tell. Good things come out of opening your heart and your mouth. You feel alone, but you aren’t and at the same time you have something unique to say. Speak rightly and truly and with chosen words. Tell your story. You are braver than you think.

You are brave.

But I can’t get away from it. So, if you haven’t already,

Friend me on Facebook.

And Follow me on Twitter.

People become family in different ways.

You have a baby with the man you marry and the three of you become a family. Your baby, the genetic mashup of the two of you, along with your marriage vows somehow melts the little trio together into a mess of love, irritation, sleeplessness and loyalty. More kids come and then there is no turning back. This is your choice: you are a family.

But sometimes, very rarely, there are friends who become family.

Friends who love you before they’ve met you in person. They love your children, speak to them with gentle words and hold your three-year-old on their laps. They laugh with you until midnight three nights in a row, invite you back even after you’ve made a mess, cook for you, understand your crankiness, and actually want to see you again.

Your kids play games together in the lake and in the basement and give each other nicknames.

You look at them while they are cleaning the kitchen and wonder if you will be friends when you both are old ladies. You are sure you will.

Friends like this, they open their home, their hearts and their vulnerable places to you with wholeness and say, “There hasn’t been enough time..” as you drive away.

These types of friends are family, and maybe family of the best kind.

Thank you Denise and Kristen for an amazing weekend.

I’ve spent the last couple days with friends.

Which is different for me. Because my normal days are spent driving kids to gymnastics, bribing first graders to finish homework without whining and fixing dinner for a husband who comes home too late eat it. And even though I live with my favorite people, somehow I miss the friendship in the midst of the chaos.

So Friday I spent all day with with my best friends: My mom and dad, my girls and my husband. We spent all day in Yosemite Valley, hiking through the Mariposa Grove of Sequoias, walking up to the bases of the waterfalls, and taking the kids on the free tram around the valley. We walked through the Native American Village behind the visitor center, had ice cream at the lodge and got really bad coffee in Curry Village.

I watched my three-year-old dance on the top of a tree stump to the music in her head and my seven-year-old skip laughing down a forest path after she claimed she hated hiking. I held hands with my husband and talked with him about all the things I’ve been saving up for a few weeks.

I guess this is what vacation is. Spending time with the same people you normally spend time with, but seeing them in a different light. And sitting next to each other and not having to say anything at all.

Its learning how to become friends again.

This weekend, we are HERE.

We will be visiting Yosemite today, staying in Bass Lake for the entire weekend, and spending time with Denise and Kristen and their families.

I’m looking forward to lots of kids, summer fun on the lake, and a church camp on Sunday and Monday. I can’t wait to connect with Denise and Kristen and to make new memories with my own family.

Who knows? Maybe this is the first year of a new tradition.

That is, if they invite us back…

[Stay close - apparently there is wifi at the lake house so I'll try to post pictures if I can.]

Laugh.
No laughter is sweeter than a seven-year-old in the throws of giggles: uncontrolled, unabashed, unlimited, abundant laughter. She laughs at her sister, mostly; at things she reads, giggling by herself up in her bedroom, or lately, she laughs at things she makes up. Just sitting there, she’ll laugh and tell me that I’ve GOT to hear what she thought of. So I listen. And laugh too, like one laughs at the clumsy jokes of a preschooler. But secretly I long to let it bubble up unashamed like she does so often. Rarely do I give myself this privilege.

Give.
Anything. Flowers, a back rub, her last twenty-five cents, a corner of her candy bar. This one likes to give. She draws pictures, makes castles and cities out of construction paper and scotch tape, and creates bracelets out of beads…and she gives them away. To me, her sister, her grandparents. Even with things she wants for herself, she is generous. She buys me coffee on Mother’s day with the only two quarters in her Hello Kitty wallet. I keep, she gives. I hoard and she spends. Extravagantly.

Jump.
She’s always taken risks and gets this from her father. She jumped off the side of the pool before she could swim, ran straight into the doors of preschool at 3 1/2 without looking back, and has always danced circles around me. She jumps, flies, leaps sometimes without looking what she’s going to land on but knowing she’ll land somewhere. I get stuck. Stuck in the same habits, routines and consequences. It scares me to not know where my feet are going to land, but then again, we never do know, do we?

I have a lot to learn.